Take Me Out to the (Hard)Ball Game

I don't follow baseball. So it should have come as no surprise
that my last-minute decision to quickly check team colors before heading to
Petco Park last Sunday revealed that I was - you guessed it - wearing the opposing
team's colors. (To my credit, I was wearing
Padres
blue. But
layering it with red resulted in what could easily be mistaken for Philly
pride.)

But I should introduce myself as something other than an
ignorant sporting event attendee. I am your new conservative KPBS (stop right
there - did I just use "conservative" and "KPBS" together?)
citizen blogger, and my attendance (sans red layering tee) at a Padres game
brought politics, faith, and patriotism into focus. Perhaps there's just
something about singing "God Bless America" with 30,000 strangers
during the seventh inning stretch that triggers feelings of unity, pride, and
yes - true thankfulness. This, combined with the
Saddleback
Church Civil Forum
of the evening before, got me thinking about the place
that religious beliefs - anyone's religious beliefs - hold in American
politics.

It is important to recognize and practice the separation of
church and state. We do not live in a theocracy, and this country was founded
on the principle that every individual is free to practice his or her religion.
Separating religion and government, however, does not render a candidate's
faith irrelevant. Without morality, a government has no reason for existence -
what need would there be for
law
? And as long as morality is an important feature of our
nation, so too will the religious perspectives of presidential candidates be of
interest. This much is made clear by the attention given to the recent
conversations Pastor Rick Warren had with
Barack Obama
and
John McCain

Warren
was an excellent moderator, posing serious and thought-provoking questions that
went beyond what one might expect during a faith forum. And before we rush to
judge Warren's
motives, it should be noted that he said in a CNN
interview
last month that he would not publicly support one candidate over the other. In
reading
Alma's
most recent post, it occurred to me that had Obama
and McCain been interviewed by a Muslim imam or a Jewish rabbi (interviews I
would find newsworthy and interesting), very few would express suspicion at the
motives of the interviewer. If Warren had an
"all encompassing mission," as Alma
puts it, I believe he made it quite clear: "I think I can set up an
environment that people can actually say, oh, so that's what that guy's really
like." Why must "Christian" be a code word for
"Crusader"? I certainly don't believe that "Muslim" is a
code word for "terrorist." But back to the forum...